


next time we talk

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Checkers, Confusion, Drunk Sex, M/M, Where We Are Tour, failure to use words, hook-ups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 17:49:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3419975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall's seen Louis get like this before, has even had it happen to him a few times. Louis is handsy when he's been drinking. Cuddlier than usual. Likes to touch. Sometimes he tries things he's embarrassed by the next day, if he remembers or if anyone's brave enough to tell him. (Or: Three times Louis kissed Niall while he was drunk, and one time Niall kissed him while they weren't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	next time we talk

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know. i don't know what this is. i've written this same fic at least like four other times and suspect this iteration of it is rife with typos. nice... i don't care about anything! title is from "own it" by the prophet drizzy. thank u for reading my trash

(1.)

They're on the bus in America the first time it happens, somewhere Heartland that Niall can't be bothered to remember at the moment. He's a little drunk but mostly tired; Liam and Louis are on this bus with him, and they turned up more than Niall did tonight, laughing their way through the empties on the table in the back lounge and knocking everything over. Niall leans back between them while they shout over each other, smiling lazily and shutting his eyes up at the ceiling. 

“Hey,” Louis says, kneeing Niall in the side. “None of that. No sleeping. No sleep 'til Brooklyn, or – how's that song go?”

“Is that where we're going?” Niall mumbles, still smiling. The bus hits a bump and he opens his eyes. Liam's lapsed into texting – probably Sophia – and Louis is smirking straight at Niall, swaying a bit. 

“Mate, I've got no fucking idea where we're going.” He swings his head around to look at Liam, and Niall blinks, frowns, trying to bring the line of Louis' neck into focus. Whenever he's just past tipsy like this he tries to imagine how the rest of them are feeling, if Louis' vision is as weird as his is right now, if Louis can hear properly, how his thoughts are working. Niall's are rolling sluggishly along, but they're mostly coherent. His ears aren't ringing yet like they would be if he was proper wasted. 

“Maybe Chicago?” Liam's saying. Louis must have asked him where they were heading while Niall was – wherever he just was. “Nah, that's my birthday.” He giggles. “Hang on, I've got the schedule somewhere.” 

“Drunk pop stars looking up their own tour schedule,” Louis laughs. He lolls his head back on Niall's shoulder, then settles properly against him, the whole top half of him sliding down into Niall's lap. Niall slips one hand into his hair automatically and tries to find a home for the other, the one that's trapped by Louis' shoulder. He can't, in the end, so he stretches it out on the back of the couch, looks down at Louis looking up at him. Even drunk and liquid like this he still makes his smile sharp, his canines bright white. 

Niall looks up at the closed door to the lounge, then Liam scrolling at his phone with loose fingers, just for somewhere else to focus his attention. Louis is warm and heavy against him, his shoulderblades prodding into Niall's thighs. 

“You're not much of a pillow,” Louis tells him, like he knew what Niall was thinking. 

“That's not very nice to say to someone you're currently lying on,” Niall says mildly. “Didn't ask you to use me as a pillow, did I?”

“No,” Louis drawls. His eyes are still fixed on Niall's face, probably getting a full view of the terrible up-angle beneath Niall's chin, and Niall feels suddenly hot. 

“You're blushing,” Louis murmurs before Niall can head him off. It makes him blush more, and he looks away.

“What's the verdict, Payno?” he asks.

“Detroit,” Liam says, and then he yawns spectacularly, stretching so broad he nearly falls off the couch. He levels a stern, drunk look at Niall. “Look at you two, then.” 

Louis smiles, nuzzling into Niall, his eyes slipping shut. Niall thinks if he was a cat he'd be purring, probably kneading Niall's thigh with his claws. 

It's another half hour before Liam takes his leave, swaying out the door with a wave of his hand and a “Stay outta trouble, lads.” Louis' had his eyes closed for most of that time, but he opens them as soon as he hears the door shut again. 

“Morning,” he drawls. 

“It's, like, half three,” Niall says. Louis pushes his head deeper into the well of Niall's thighs. There's no way he's actually comfortable. “Lou,” he mumbles, not sure what he wants but asking anyway.

Louis sits up with a sigh, which Niall recognizes then was something he didn't want, but he's back just as quickly, throwing his legs over Niall's and an arm around his shoulders, like Niall's about to pick him up and carry him somewhere. 

“Are you tired?” he asks, murmuring close next to Niall's ear and making him shiver. “Gonna bail out on me now, eh?”

“Don't have to,” Niall says, turning his face toward Louis, pulling back a bit so he isn't so blurry. “Whatcha wanna do?” 

The smirk that slides across Louis' lips sends a thrill through Niall that he can't place, until Louis speaks again. “Dunno,” he says, and he slides a hand into Niall's hair, scratches lightly at the nape of his neck so Niall shivers again. 

“Louis, you're drunk.”

“So're you.” Louis pouts a bit, scans the table for a cup or a bottle with something still in it and finds none. Niall's seen Louis get like this before, has even had it happen to him a few times. Louis is handsy when he's been drinking. Cuddlier than usual. Likes to touch. Sometimes he tries things he's embarrassed by the next day, if he remembers or if anyone's brave enough to tell him.

Louis swings his attention back to Niall then, sweeps his hooded eyes all over his face, and Niall's heart is beating fast, thinking of how it would already look if anyone came in here, how he should stop it like everybody else always does, like he himself has in the past, with varying degrees of difficulty. Louis' insistent closeness is already clouding his judgment more even than the alcohol. 

“Look how lovely you are,” Louis says, and Niall's whole body lights up, even as he turns his face. He smiles, but the beat of his heart is painful in his chest.

“Don't, Lou,” he says. 

“Meaning do,” Louis laughs, “isn't that how this goes? Little white lies, and that?” 

Niall feels his lips on his neck. 

“Louis,” he says, trying and failing to be sharp about it. He turns, and Louis' lips slide up his jaw, sucking in a kiss below it. He tightens the grip he has on Niall's hair, and Niall is breathing tight through his mouth, knowing he wants more of it, not knowing what to do. 

Finally he breathes, "Okay," and Louis is kissing his mouth before the sound is even over. Niall rocks back with it for a moment before kissing back, helpless, his eyes slipping shut. Louis' tongue works over his lower lip, into his mouth, and his whole body is so fucking relaxed compared to Niall's, rigid under him, clutching at Louis' waist. He hasn't gotten to kiss a boy in a long fucking time. 

He pulls away first, too abrupt, so it makes a ridiculous sound. Louis' eyes are glassy as he frowns at Niall, his thin mouth already a deepening kissed-pink, and that's what Niall's staring at as he says, weakly, “We probably shouldn't.”

Louis scoffs and swings his legs off of Niall, and Niall thinks that's it, he's fucked it and Louis will never try this with him again, but then he's straddling him.

“Don't you ever just wanna make out with someone?” he asks, sliding both hands into Niall's hair and kissing him again, and Niall groans a little, hands settling in the easy dip of Louis' waist like it was made for them. “Go with it,” Louis mumbles into his mouth, “c'mon, Niall,” and the soft scratch of his scruff against Niall's face is like a rush in Niall's ears, the heavy spread of his thighs across Niall's hips. Niall wonders if it could have just as easily been Liam, if Niall had left the lounge first. 

He tastes rum sweetness under Louis' tongue, the stale sour of their beer chasers, something thinner under all of it, Louis' own clean taste, and he has a flash of how insane it is that he knows that taste now, that it fits into all his other knowledge of Louis, that catalog he's been building for years. Like for all of them, though Louis has always been a little different. More of a prize, to get to fill in those blanks. 

He stares at the wall as Louis sucks on his neck again, gets hard to the little mewling sounds he makes as Niall holds his hips tighter and pulls him in. Louis rides his thigh, gasping, and Niall wants to ask him if this is just something to fill the space when he drinks, if it even matters, but the grind of Louis' leg between his feels too good for him to get the words out.

They don't take their clothes off, and it's quick and mostly quiet, the frantic punch of Louis' hips against Niall, how he clings onto him and whines his name while he comes in his pants. Niall can feel the wet when it happens, lost for a moment in the way Louis' hips slow to rolling pace, how he trembles in Niall's arms. Niall kisses his neck all through it. 

Louis goes limp after, sighing.

“Fuck,” he groans, and then he shifts off of Niall, stretching out away from him on the couch. Niall gapes. Every nerve in his body is keyed toward his dick, still trapped in his jeans, and Louis is just lying there blinking at the ceiling. He shuts his eyes.

Niall can't ask for it, can't be funny about it, can't do anything. He lurches up off the couch after a minute, and when Louis doesn't move or say anything, he staggers out the door and into the little bathroom, not knowing what else to do. Gets himself off over the toilet in a minute flat, thinking of Louis' tongue in his mouth, the desperate little sounds he'd made, forcing himself to ignore the fact that he's been left to go do this alone in the loo. 

Louis is asleep on the couch when Niall steps back into the lounge, or pretending, a blanket from the floor pulled over him. Niall backs out, swallowing thickly, shuts the door behind him with a quiet click. 

He falls into his own bunk, feeling sick and unsteady. The space behind his closed eyes spins as he lies down, exhausted and not the right amount of drunk. He falls asleep awash in shame and confusion. 

 

Louis acts like nothing happened in the morning. Niall's seen him do this before, too, after all the other times he's been stupidly touchy while drunk, but he's never been on this side of it and it's fucking awful. He wishes he'd managed to leave any marks at all on Louis' neck. 

He catches Louis' eye deliberately at one point later, before the show, and gets a long grin in return. It's something, but Niall still isn't sure how to read it – if it's Louis acknowledging, or if it's Louis saying that the drunk thing is one thing, but that this is them being normal, just being mates. That _don't put too much stock in it, Niall_ kind of feeling that's so terribly special to Louis. 

Niall wonders if he even remembers. They don't talk about it, and no one else seems to notice.

 

(2.)

It's weeks before the next time, so long that Niall has giving up trying to figure out how to ask about it and given up waiting for it to happen again and let it settle into his catalog. Just another weird point along the long stupid line of his stupid teenage crush on Louis Tomlinson. Louis comes to his London birthday party and leaves with Eleanor, grinning at Niall like they're the pals they always have been.

There are just a lot of different versions of Louis, Niall concludes. Different shades, even when he's drunk. Different things he wants. 

They take over the hotel bar for a bit of a party after the first show in Charlotte. Harry's being obvious with a really attractive, slightly older couple in a corner booth, and Zayn and Liam are ensconced together having a serious comic book conversation like they're trying not to be jealous of Harry's prospects. Niall would normally expect Louis to be in that mix, but Louis has decided to pick Niall tonight. He's been sitting with him at the bar for two hours, letting him talk about golf and laughing with his forehead on Niall's shoulder, their knees brushing. 

He smiles at Niall in a lull in the conversation.

“D'you wanna go up?” he asks. He slides their drinks together and walks his fingertips over Niall's behind them, so they're out of sight. All at once, Niall isn't sure if he's really been listening to him or if he's just been building up to this in his head the whole time. 

But they disappear together anyway, Niall's heartbeat thumping in the pit of his stomach. He spots Zayn watching them go and wonders if he's thinking of intervening, but they make it into the lift together without interruption. Louis just stands next to him, relaxed and flush, full of Long Islands and whiskey shots with peach juice toppers. That's what Niall will taste, if he gets to kiss him tonight. His mouth floods at the thought in spite of himself. 

Louis takes him to his room, untouched since they got here, and bolts the door. He kisses Niall before Niall can even get a breath, like Detroit was yesterday, like this is something they do all the time. Niall sighs into it, backs into the wall so Louis has to follow him, stumbling over their feet. 

“What brought this on tonight, Lou?” Niall asks into his mouth, trying to make it casual, forces it out quick before he can stop himself. 

Louis laughs, low, scraping his teeth along Niall's jaw. “You looked good on stage,” he mutters. “Always look so good, Niall. Such a good kisser.” His lips are at Niall's by now, still grinning, predatory, and Niall's heart doesn't know what to do with itself, sinking and lifting in one. 

“Fuck,” Niall breathes as Louis sucks on his lower lip. “I don't know, Lou--”

“Just a little bit,” Louis says, “just, here.” He slides his hands under Niall's shirt, kissing his throat. 

“What about Eleanor,” Niall tries, feeling pathetic. Louis snorts.

“It's not a big deal, Niall,” he says, looking at him, but he waits a moment, which is new – that slight ask instead of just assuming it, reading it in the give of Niall's body. 

_It's a big deal to me_ , Niall thinks, swallowing under Louis' hot gaze, but he doesn't say it. Instead he nods, and then he's even grinning, that flicker of how much he can't believe he gets to have this in any way at all. Louis grins back, kisses him again. Peach and whiskey sharp. 

Louis sucks him off first this time, spreads Niall out on top of the duvet and has him clutching at it, gasping, his hips fucking into Louis' wet mouth, and afterwards Louis wants to get himself off on Niall's stomach so he lets him, just watching Louis straddled over him jerking off, his dick in his fist, the V of his hips going taut. Harsh breathing, hair a wreck over his forehead. Niall's too heavy to move, but he closes his eyes when Louis starts to come, sighing at the warm wet of it, lifting his hips a little. 

Louis stretches out next to him when it's over, wriggling into Niall's side and dragging a finger through the come striped up his body. 

“Gross,” Niall laughs, and he wants to turn and kiss Louis, to make it something, but he doesn't want to get jizz on the sheets. 

“God, I'm drunk,” Louis slurs happily at the ceiling, wiping his finger on his side of the bed after all, “So drunk. The drunkest. Drunker'n you, I bet.”

“You definitely are.”

“Whose room are we in?”

“Yours, fool.” 

“Right,” Louis sighs. “Lovely.” Niall loves the way he says that word, the richness of the sound. His heart is hurting a little, and his head.

He cleans up in the bathroom, and when he gets back Louis is under the covers with his eyes closed. Niall can tell from his breathing, though, that he's not asleep.

“I'll see you tomorrow, then?” he says, even as he's thinking the traitorous thing: _Ask me to stay_. 

“Yeah,” Louis murmurs without opening his eyes. 

Niall's stomach turns. He shows himself out.

 

(3.)

It's a week later, the night before the last show in Miami, and Niall hasn't seen Louis all night. He's up in the hotel with Harry, literally playing checkers, eating room service, listening to Harry stories and feeling like he's being hypnotized. 

His phone buzzes on the floor beside him.

“What's Louis want?” Harry asks, frowning at the text message preview.

“Hey,” Niall says, snatching it up. He only realizes it's a weird reaction when Harry raises an eyebrow at him, and it's not the first time Niall has wondered if they all know, or if it's something Louis' done with the rest of them too. He's always assumed so but sometimes he's not sure. 

The text reads, _Niall I'm bit DRUNK_

“He's drunk,” Niall informs Harry.

“Oh.” Harry skips three of Niall's red checkers, sweeps them off the board and puts them in his pocket. “Does he need help?”

“I'm sure he does,” Niall mutters. He texts Louis back _haha where are ya mate ??_

 _Bus 1 alllll by meself_ , and then three emoji sobbing puddles on their emoji floor, plus the winky face with its tongue sticking out and another blowing a kiss. Niall laughs a little, skin prickling. 

“It's your move,” Harry says. He's looking at Niall like he knows far too much about what's going on, and Niall takes advantage of the distraction to jump over two of Harry's checkers and chuck them into his suitcase. 

“Hey,” Harry whines. “You know you've left yourself open to attack, there.” 

But Niall's already back on his phone. _need some company then ?_ he asks Louis, hating himself as he sends it for how dragged into this he's gotten. He's not even drunk, and it makes him feel like he's the one taking advantage, even though it's Louis who really is – Niall knows this, feels it in the way Louis barely seems to care it's Niall he's hooking up with when it's happening. 

“Might go check on him,” he mumbles. Harry sighs. 

“Thought you might,” he says. “You okay, though?” 

“What? Yeah.” 

“Louis can be a pain when he's drunk.”

“I know.”

“Well, you'll be okay,” Harry sighs. “You, like, know yourself.”

“What?”

Harry's texting Liam to come take over Niall's checkers spot now, and he doesn't answer. Niall thinks of asking again, and then he thinks of every time he didn't ask Louis for an explanation about something weird he did with the two of them, things like he's probably about to do. Niall wants it to all be the same, wants it to be normal, so he just leaves. 

Louis is curled up in the lounge when Niall's let onto the bus, tiny from all the way up front. He's smiling sleepily, calves bare in basketball shorts and his ankles crossed beneath him, as Niall picks his way back to him through the detritus between the bunks. When Niall's close enough he holds his arms out, beckoning.

Niall takes his hands, stays a safe distance away, looking him over.

“What're you doing here all on your own?”

“Everyone left me,” he says. “Zayn wanted to sleep and I didn't, so here we are.” Niall can't tell if he's stoned as well as drunk and half-asleep. There's a crumpled Solo cup beside a fifth of vodka and a bottle of lime seltzer on the table, both mostly depleted. “C'mere, Niall,” Louis laughs, pulling at his hands. 

“Dunno where you want me to go,” Niall laughs, and Louis rolls his eyes. 

“Don't play dumb, love,” he says, and he tugs so that Niall stumbles forward, onto him, stretching out awkwardly. 

“Hi,” he breathes into Niall's ear, boozy and hot. Niall buries his face in Louis' neck, not kissing him yet, just lying there. He wonders if they could get away with just this, and wonders why he keeps fighting it going further when he knows he wants it. Wishes Louis was sober. That they could wait and try it then. 

Louis kisses his neck aimlessly, rolls onto his side so Niall's trapped between him and the couch, and they make out like that for a while, just lying together. Louis doesn't feel as distant as he has the other times, and Niall can almost convince himself it's real, normal, the way he wishes it could be. Except Louis' mouth keeps slipping on his and he seems like he's already half asleep. 

It's not that Niall minds that he's drunk, it's just – he doesn't know what he minds. He can't figure out what Louis wants. 

“You okay?” Louis asks after a while. 

“Yeah,” Niall mumbles. “But – can we, like.” He swallows, nose brushing Louis' soft cheek. “Just do this?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, sounding confused. He pulls back, squinting at Niall, close. “Have I fucked this up?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“You're up for it, yeah? I haven't got this wrong?”

Niall shivers. It's the first real question, even if it's fucking stupid, and his voice rasps around a little smile as he answers, “I'm up for it, yeah.” 

Louis slips a hand under Niall's shirt, along his side, just rests it there on his ribs, and it's a long time before he speaks again. “El and I are, like. Taking a break.” 

“What?”

“Yeah. Just... wanna try other people for a while. See how we feel. It's been...” and Niall's hanging on the words but Louis trails off, leaving him in limbo, not even knowing how to move. “I'm sorry,” Louis mumbles finally, “it's been weird,” and he nuzzles into Niall again, tucking his face into his shoulder so his soft hair's almost in Niall's mouth. 

He falls asleep like that, slow enough that Niall could have kept him talking but too quick for him to realize it in the end. Niall listens to him breathing, tries to time his own breaths to it to calm the wild beating of his heart. He can't keep up with Louis in this. Doesn't know how to tell him how _see how we feel_ feels to him.

 

He wakes when Louis does in the morning. Niall hates sleeping on the bus when it's not moving; it's always disorienting to feel it dead still under him, like he's got sea legs, and waking with Louis tangled up with him is worlds weirder still. 

Louis groans, rolling away from Niall and nearly falling off the couch. Niall saves him with an instinctive arm around his waist. 

“Morning,” Louis grumbles. “Ugh, my skin hurts, don't.”

“Sorry.” Niall snatches his arm back, watches Louis stand and stretch, joints popping, his thighs trembling a little in his shorts. He stumbles to the loo without another word, and Niall sit up and swings his bare feet onto the floor. He can't remember taking his shoes off, feels like he was drunk last night, too. 

Louis is retching in the bathroom. Niall hadn't realized how fucked up he'd been – he'd seemed more lucid than ever, and it makes the things he'd said turn sour in Niall's memory, rotting at the edges. He'd been stupid to think of it. That Louis was trying to push this somewhere further than just drunken bullshit. 

He wants to leave before Louis comes out of the loo, but he knows he won't do it. You know yourself, he thinks of Harry saying, and he wishes that didn't make him sad.

“Lou,” he says, tapping gently at the door. “Need a hand, mate?”

“I'm fine,” comes Louis' weak voice. “Rough night.” 

“Yeah.” Niall sinks down against the opposite wall to wait. 

Finally Louis comes out, peaky, his hair a stringy mess. He blinks down at Niall like he's never had less energy to figure something out. 

“You smell terrible,” Niall says, looking up at him. 

“Thanks,” Louis says, and veers off toward his bunk near the front. Niall watches him go, wishes he had the balls to make him talk about it now and damn his hangover. Instead he goes inside for breakfast, leaving a mug of water next to Louis' shut curtains. 

 

Zayn asks him about it, later, because that's what Zayn does – just up and asks if he wants to know, like it's no big deal, makes you feel like you can just talk to him about anything at all. 

“So – d'you like boys, then, or is it just, like, a Louis thing?” he asks, after Niall's given him the basics. They're in the lounge at the venue, watching Walking Dead reruns and eating sandwiches. 

“Boys and girls, I mean,” Niall shrugs. “It's not really about that so much as it's...”

“A Louis thing,” Zayn supplies.

“Sorta.” Niall swallows. It's harder and easier to talk about now that it's out there in this closed space – easier because Zayn knowing is a comfort, but harder because he's got to tease out the threads of it now, understand the details in a way he's been trying to avoid. “I mean, he's done it all to the rest of you while he's drunk, too, right?”

Zayn laughs. “Nah, actually,” he says. “I mean – you're right, he gets, like. He's one of those people who just wants to cuddle and shit while he's drinking. He's touchy. Harry is too, I mean – not such a weird thing, but.” He shrugs. “At least with me, and I'm pretty sure with Liam and Harry, too, though you'd have to ask 'em – but I'm pretty sure it hasn't actually happened. Like, gone there, you know? With anyone else. Think I'd know. He probably would've told me.”

“Oh.” Niall licks his lips. “Wait, so he told you about me, then?”

“No,” Zayn says, “but – this might just be me knowing now, but he does get kind of a look when he talks about you. Kind of a different look. He's always seen you a bit differently, hasn't he?”

“I don't really know.” Niall's mouth tugs down at the corners. 

"Louis just gets, like, real protective of himself," Zayn says. Niall likes listening to him talk about the other boys. He likes the way Zayn thinks. "Just 'cause he's not showing it the next day --it doesn't mean he's not thinking about it. I think he just doesn't know what to do." 

It makes Niall smile a little. The most ridiculous part is that that's something he loves about Louis, that sometimes he's got so much feeling in him he gets scared of it. It makes the moments when he does let it show better, somehow. Makes them mean more.

“Is it good or bad, that it's just you he's been – like, hooking up with like that?” Zayn asks. 

“I don't know,” Niall sighs again. He watches unseeingly as Norman Reedus fucks shit up on the giant telly. “Good, maybe. But. I'm... I'm kinda into him.” 

“I know, mate.”

“Christ. Does everyone know?”

“Well, no, not like that, not particularly, but.” Zayn rubs Niall's back a little, between his slumped, tense shoulderblades. “With all this... not so hard to put it together.”

Niall shakes his head, staring at his knees. 

“Best just to talk to him about it, I think,” Zayn says softly. “That's, like, the only way to get things done with Louis, most times. 'Cause he thinks he's doing both of you a favor just ignoring it, but he's really being an idiot. So... sometime when neither of you's been drinking, yeah?”

“But we're going on break.”

Zayn laughs. “Ask him tonight then, if it's gonna drive you crazy,” he says. “It's simpler than you think, Niall.”

Niall doesn't really agree with that, but Zayn seems to think it's settled, so he lets the words stay drifting over his mind and doesn't say anything else. 

 

(1.)

There's nothing like a show to take Niall out of his head and send him soaring for two blissful hours. And tonight's the last one for months, so he rides that high as hard as he can, up in the stratosphere with all of them. 

There's just one moment where he sits beside Louis at a talk break and catches himself floating – just gazing at him, Louis barely even paying attention – and that's when it hits him, like a bright light. Niall is fucking _in it_. Up for it, like Louis had said. For all of it. It's so stupid to skirt the issue when he wants it this much, to keep wasting their time. 

The realization is so dazzling that it scares him, and elates him, and fills his whole chest. Every time Louis catches his eye and smiles with him for the rest of the show, it buoys Niall up and up and up. 

He's still buzzing with it as they get off-stage. They're having a hotel party, nowhere to rush off to after the vans from the venue. Once they're back, Niall drags Louis onto empty Bus 2 and hugs him tight for a long time. 

Louis laughs against him, hugs back. “What's that for?” he asks. His voice is a different kind of intoxicated, stage-drunk, brimming over. 

“To make it easier for me to do this,” Niall says, and he cups the back of Louis' head and kisses him. His heart leaps with it, and more when Louis' hands go around his waist and he kisses back, hard, pressing Niall into the wall. 

Louis' gasping when they break apart, a laugh bubbling out of him as he looks at Niall, eyes bright. “Is that so?” he asks, grinning big. 

“You know, I just thought we could – not wait 'til you're drunk this time,” Niall says, breathless. He's never felt so vulnerable, but he's got to talk or he'll drown in it. “If – if you want, if you really want.”

“Nialler,” Louis breathes. He's still laughing, a little, like he can't help it. He stares at Niall's mouth for a moment, then looks him in the eye. “I made you ask, didn't I?”

Niall huffs a laugh, even as he feels the question lance through his chest. “Yeah, kinda.”

Louis kisses him again, two fingers under his chin, stealing Niall's breath. Niall gets that thin clean taste again, the inherent sweetness of Louis. Thinks of how he'll taste later, whatever they go and do at the after-party, thinks it feels so fucking good not to care or worry about it. 

“I'm sorry – if I made it weird,” Louis mumbles, close to Niall's mouth. “You can ask any time. Any time, Niall. You know, I wanted to, and – I didn't, like.” He inhales, laughing a bit, shaky. “You know I don't really know how to be bloody normal about anything.” 

“Sure you do,” Niall murmurs, searching between Louis' eyes. 

And he gets it then, what Zayn had said. _Simpler than you think._ “It's just, you know. If we want to, then – we shouldn't need an excuse for it.” And he's still not quite positive it's the right thing, but it feels so good to say it and see how it lands in Louis' eyes. 

Louis nods, biting back a smile, and Niall can feel him relax under his hands. 

“We oughta go put in an appearance, you think?” Louis says, running a hand through Niall's hair, watching it get mussed. 

“Maybe.” Niall's not so hot on the idea, if he's honest, but he knows there'll be time for this later, maybe up in the hotel. When it'll just be him and Louis, not a version of him, nothing faked. Louis nips at his lower lip anyway, making no move to go anywhere, and Niall kisses back, laughs into his mouth, lets himself stop thinking.

**Author's Note:**

> niall's Epiphany Moment onstage in miami is captured in [this gifset](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com/post/111844867068/x-greetings-earthlings-i-wrote-a-fic-about-this), and that's also my tumblr, where you're welcome to be my friend! :) x


End file.
